Online Marketing From Home

Niche discovery and niche marketing may be common concepts. However, it is clear that many marketers have a problem with the “niche discovery” concept and are totally confused by it.

Instead of just writing another “bla bla bla post” on niche marketing, I have decided to rather share some of my personal views with you…

You see, there are many books and reports available on the market about how you should go about finding hot niche markets. Most of them are more or less the same…

They give a step-by-step plan on how to find a good niche market but they often fail to address some very important underlying issues. It is a question of telling people what to do but not sharing enough information with them for them to really understand what they are doing.

Allow me to explain…   

What a lot of marketers are told is simply “Do keyword research and find a market with a lot of demand and few competitors”. What they then do is use a keyword research tool such as Wordtracker and start searching like crazy for competitive keywords, not really knowing what they looking for…

They post questions in forums asking things like “This phrase gets 100 searches a day and there are 100,000 competing sites. Is this good?”

People often focus so much on keyword research that they fail to understand the bigger picture…

First of all, you have to understand why people browse the internet. Forget about niche marketing and keyword research for a moment. Just think about why you or your friends and family browse the internet.

In my opinion, there are mainly three reasons.

People search the internet…

a. Looking for information (To solve a “problem”). Emphasis on INFORMATION. Some will be prepared to pay for it, others not (info may be readily available for free).

b. Looking to buy something – Book (Amazon), Music, Lingerie, Software, etc.

c. Looking for entertainment & companionship (lonely) – Games, chat rooms, dating, adult.

They key question is: “Are you dealing with buyers or browsers?” You want to target a market that is full of hungry buyers, not simply people fooling around online.

You need to understand your target market.

Finding a “good” keyword phrase with 1,000 searches per day and hardly any competitors does not mean you struck gold. A key phrase with 100 searches per day and 50,000 competitors may actually turn out a lot more profitable…  
 
You see, the problem with relying too much on a keyword research tool is simply that you may be getting all the cold, hard facts, but you are not given information on the people who are searching those keywords or key phrases. 

Fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people browsing the internet have no intention at all of spending money. This is obviously not something Wordtracker can report on. This is why you need to understand your target market.

Let me share an embarrassing story with you… I once “discovered” a great keyword phrase for a niche I was interested in. High search results, low competition. Sounded great. I spent quite a lot of time building a website, getting graphics, etc.

Eventually I found out that the great keyword phrase I discovered was actually not so great… It was the title of a popular song! Sure, I got some decent traffic but it was only once I found out who was searching for this keyword phrase that I realized my serious blunder…

I made the mistake of selecting a keyword phrase purely based on cold, hard facts. I did not take the time to understand my market. Big mistake!

A more common mistake is to optimize a web page for a specific keyword you have discovered just to find out that people searching that keyword are really browsers and not buyers. Yes, I know… Get them to opt-in for a special offer, send them seven emails… This seldom actually works if you get it wrong from the very beginning.

Tip: The apparent lack of Google Adwords for a specific keyword or keyword phrase is often a strong indication that you are not dealing with buyers.

Niche discovery is first and foremost about really understanding your target market. Who are they? Where do they go looking for information? What do they want? Are they prepared to pay for the right information? Who are your competitors? Are they giving the market what they want? Why would anyone buy from you instead of your competitors? What do you have to offer?   

This is one of the reasons why I always recommend that you should target a market that you have some knowledge of or are very interested in. Becoming an authority in a market that you do not understand or are not really interested in is very difficult.

By the same token, there is no point to focus on a market that you are an expert in but that has very little demand… 

Furthermore, it is also becoming more and more difficult to “discover” a virgin market. You are bound to have competition and even if you don’t you will soon get competition in the unlikely event that you have stumbled on a goldmine. 

Many marketers follow the easy route. They use Wordtracker for keyword research. Since many top keywords are flooded with competition they start using so-called “long-tail-keywords”. These are keywords with some demand and fewer competitors.

They put up a website, blog, squeeze page or Squidoo lens, write some articles to Ezine Articles, buy an ebook with Resell Rights or PLR’s, find some affiliate products on Clickbank to promote, set up a “bonus” and 7-part autoresponder series with Aweber and then forget about it…

Most of the times these marketers make very little money. Sure, they may make a sale here and there but nothing too serious. What these marketers are then told by the so-called “gurus” is that they should build hundreds of these sites! The reasoning is that if you can make $100 per month from one site that you will make $10,000 per month from 100 sites.

It sounds very logical, doesn’t it? It is certainly one way of doing niche marketing and I know a lot of people are earning a relatively good income building these sites.

However, this approach has some serious flaws…

First, of all, you will have to build a significant number of sites in order to earn a decent income. Secondly, it is very time consuming – You will have to spread yourself very thin and will never really be able to become an authority in your niche. Thirdly, and people like me really like this… It is so easy to displace these sites with my own sites.

You see, I don’t only look at the market, I also look at my competitors. Even if a small niche has already been flooded by 50,000 competing web pages, I know that most of those web pages are poorly optimized, give regurgitated information, sales pages are often poorly written, support is just about non-existent, etc.

Getting on the 1st page of Google is often easy. I build a quality website, do my research and bend backwards to deliver real value. 
        
The downside, you may point out, is that I cannot build & maintain hundreds of these sites at the same time. You are obviously correct. However, I make more money per site than most of the wishy-washy sites will. I make more money per customer by putting them in a sales funnel and getting a lot of repeat business. My sites rank better and are less vulnerable to competition.

By building quality sites I am also able to rank higher for more competitive keywords and do not simply have to rely on long-tail keywords with an uncertain future.

You have probably already heard me talk about the shotgun-approach – People firing in any direction hoping to hit something. I see a lot of people throwing websites in all directions hoping some of them will stick. What I have also noticed is that many of these websites that do initially “stick” quickly slide down once someone pours some cold water over them…

In case you are wondering, yes, I also use flimsy squeeze pages, etc. But, with totally different intentions. They are great for advertising and list-building purposes – Banner ads, PPC, ezine ads, etc. But, I do not use them to get organic traffic. They are simply too easy for competitors to displace.

Anyway, these are some of my thoughts on niche discovery and niche marketing. It is not possible to comprehensively cover this topic in a short blog post but I trust I was at least able to illustrate the need for looking beyond simple keyword research techniques.

Thanks for reading!

To your online marketing success!
Francois du Toit

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Niche Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.